Why Bass? Because It's There And They Love It

By The Dawn's Early Light

May 30, 1999|By CLAUDIA VAN NES; Courant Staff Writer

Up ahead on the east side of the river; see that pile of rocks on the bank? You can just make it out at 5:30 on a murky Hartford morning, and it's certainly not much of a landmark on the long and beautiful Connecticut River.

It is however, a bench mark; at least for Jose Soler, who as a child could leave his hard life in the city behind when he came to the river with his fishing pole.

``See that rock pile, there's a little cove there,'' says Soler, pointing to the East Hartford spot as he glides away from his hometown of Hartford in his pal, Alonzo Evans', bass boat.

His dad left home when Soler was young, his mom worked third shift as a clerical worker and interpreter for Spanish-speaking patients at Hartford Hospital, and Soler spent his youth fishing the then-dirty Connecticut River in Hartford and East Hartford.

``My fondest memories are fishing in this river as a kid,'' Soler says as Evans' boat glides past a bank alongside a small tunnel in Hartford where Soler caught his first bass.

Fishing, plus a mom with ``a strong backbone'' and playing sports ``kept me out of trouble,'' says the 29-year-old Soler, who is now a state social worker helping other at-risk kids.

It's a job he likes a lot and works hard at, but Soler's passion is still fishing -- specifically, bass fishing.

He dreams a near impossible dream of becoming a professional bass fisherman.

``When you talk to someone who's making a living at what they love to do, they're the happiest person in the world,'' figures Soler, a handsome young guy who's been a married a year and whose wife is expecting their first child any moment. He carries a beeper on the boat should that moment be now.

In the backyard of the couple's first house in Newington, Soler mows the lawn and practices casting.

It's doubtful bass are ever completely out of his mind.

Catching large- and small-mouth bass wouldn't seem the basis for much of a career. These freshwater fish aren't elusive, they don't put up a spirited fight; they don't even have teeth; they don't weigh much as a rule; you can catch them any time of day, and they're found ``in every farm pond and big river in the country,'' as Ron Angelo, owner of Connecticut Outfitters Corp. of Hartford, puts it.

It is, however, this very abundance that makes bass so potentially valuable to those who seek to snare them.

If you had the desire and means, you could enter a bass tournament somewhere in this country almost any day of the year, and that's what Soler would like to do -- follow the tournaments and catch the biggest bass. The purses can be lucrative. Last year, in a Connecticut River tournament, the first prize was $200,000.

On this morning, though, at the launch site at Riverside Park in Hartford, Evans' is the only bass boat in sight. It's a sleek-looking little vessel, metal flecked and jazzy; it looks like Elvis' guitar.

It's fast, too. It can go 60 miles an hour, and that's still 20 or so miles an hour slower than the newer, hotter ones, Evans says with envy in his voice.

Soler met Evans three years ago on the job -- Evans is a state social worker too, originally from Florida, where he spent his youth fishing in phosphate mining pits in the Fort Mead area.

``I'd walk the railroad tracks sometimes 7, 8 miles a day as a kid to get to a fishing area, and I'd fish for hours,'' says Evans.

Soler found a soulmate in Evans, who is 43 and recently formed the Bass Travelers, one of a number of bass fishing clubs in the state, this one with the goal of introducing fishing to disadvantaged kids.

Evans also dreams of a professional life as a bass fisherman, but with a different angle. He's working with a friend in Alabama to develop the first minority-hosted TV fishing show. Bass fishing is also big on the weekend sports shows, and Evans figures he's got a shot at joining the lineup as an African American host of one of these shows.

If it takes knowledge and enthusiasm, Evans has the job wrapped up.

He maneuvers his 20-foot, 1500-pound boat down the Connecticut River at a lazy pace, talking bass with Soler. Between them, they may have 600 to 700 lures, a pile of reels and a lot of fish stories, but no fish recipes.

These guys don't eat what could make them money. They throw back every bass caught. They enter a lot of tournaments, although neither has won more than a couple of thousand dollars over a long course of fishing.

The morning Evans and Soler set out from Hartford it was to ``pre-fish'' the Connecticut River in anticipation of a tournament the following weekend. It's necessary to pre-fish or scout your waters, they explain, to find out where the bass are gathering; what lures to use; what the currents and tides are doing; where there may be a little cove or side stream unexplored that the competition may not yet know about.

In a tournament, the two explain, anglers without boats get paired up randomly with boat owners; you don't know who you're going to fish with and although you do it together, you each have your own catch.